Workshop: I-Corps for Learning (I-Corps-L): A Pilot Initiative to Propagate & Scale Educational Innovations

参加者：卡尔·史密斯（明尼苏达大学）安·麦肯纳（亚利桑那州立大学）克里斯托弗·斯旺（塔夫茨大学）项目描述这个项目是解决制定教育改革的长期挑战。它正在采取一种创业方法，帮助NSF PI团队制定战略，以宣传和扩大其资助的教育创新。该试点项目建立在2011年启动的国家科学基金会（NSF）I-Corps计划的基础上，并将工作重点重新放在教育活动上。该团队正在创建一个I-Corps for Learning（I-Corps-L）模型，为NSF资助的研究人员及其团队提供一个项目，以评估其教育活动的可持续扩展潜力。I-Corps-L团队正在开发和提供一个为期八周的学习课程，旨在根据Steve Blank开发的Lean Launchpad方法，向团队传授商业模式设计和客户开发流程（他沿着Jerry Engel也将担任该项目的顾问）。NSF正在支持10个来自计算机和信息科学与工程（CISE）的受资助者，教育和人力资源（EHR）和工程（ENG）董事会在2013年秋季。这十个示范项目是由项目官员选出的，重点关注STEM的关键概念/课程/实践，解决STEM本科生成功的潜在障碍。I-Corps-L项目的目标是与这些团队合作，以实现以下目标：1）为团队提供体验式学习机会，帮助确定他们的创新是否准备好实现可持续的可扩展性。可持续的可扩展性涉及一个自我支持的实体，它是可持续的，系统地促进教育创新的采用，并使其能够和促进其使用。2)使团队能够就创新的可持续可扩展性制定明确的进行/不进行决策。3)制定过渡计划和可操作的任务，以推动创新向前发展，实现可持续的可扩展性。 该项目有可能通过教育创新的传播和规模来实现教育改革这一难以实现的目标。团队参与者离开该计划，获得了一套扩展的技能和知识，为他们提供了必要的工具，以评估他们的研究并将其转化为可以造福社会的应用程序。该项目的主要目标是在教育界培养创业思维，使教育界有潜力影响教育创新的设计和实施方式。该项目鼓励其他教育爱好者利用这一试点的成果，以创造广泛的影响。该项目的成果可以在许多机构实施，有可能大大提高全国STEM学生的保留和毕业率。 该项目正在进行一项评估，将研究该方案的交付、影响和有效性。一组13个研究问题有关的程序正在研究中，在2014年ASEE年会上提出的结果，并发表在工程教育杂志。这项评估工作由加里·利希特博士领导，他是混合方法研究方面的专家，十多年来一直参与STEM教育的研究和评估研究。最终，这个试点项目正在开发一个举办培训讲习班的模式，从而广泛使用教育创新来改善STEM学习。

PARTICIPANTS: Karl Smith (University of Minnesota)Ann McKenna (Arizona State University)Christopher Swan (Tufts University)PROJECT DESCRIPTION This project is addressing the longstanding challenge of enacting educational transformation. It is taking an entrepreneurial approach to help NSF PI teams develop strategies to propagate and scale their funded educational innovations. This pilot project builds on the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program, which was launched in 2011, and refocuses the efforts on educational activities. The team is creating an I-Corps for Learning (I-Corps-L) model to provide a program for NSF-funded researchers and their teams to evaluate the sustainable scalability potential of their educational activities. The I-Corps-L team is developing and delivering an eight-week course of study designed to teach teams the business model design and customer development process, based on the Lean Launchpad approach developed by Steve Blank (who, along with Jerry Engel, will also serve as a consultant to the project).NSF is supporting 10 grantees drawn from the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR), and Engineering (ENG) directorates in the fall of 2013. The ten exemplary projects have been selected by program officers and focus on key STEM concepts/courses/practices that address potential roadblocks to STEM undergraduate student success.The I-Corps-L program goals are to work with these teams to accomplish the following: 1) Give the team an experiential learning opportunity to help determine the readiness of their innovation for sustainable scalability. Sustainable scalability involves a self-supported entity that is sustainable and systematically promotes the adoption of the educational innovation and enables and facilitates its use. 2) Enable the team to develop a clear go/no-go decision regarding sustainable scalability of the innovation. 3) Develop a transition plan and actionable tasks to move the innovation forward to sustainable scalability. This project has the potential for achieving the elusive goal of educational transformation through propagation and scale of educational innovations. The team participants leave the program with an expanded set of skills and knowledge that provide them with the tools necessary to evaluate and translate their research into applications that can benefit society. This effort has a strong potential for having a transformative impact on STEM education.BROADER SIGNIFICANCE The principal objective of the project is to foster an entrepreneurial mindset within the education community, so the community has the potential to impact the way education innovations are designed and implemented. The project is encouraging other educational enthusiasts to leverage the outcomes of this pilot to create a broad scale impact. The results of the project can be implemented at many institutions, having the potential to significantly improve the retention and graduation of STEM students nationwide. The project is conducting an evaluation that will study the program's delivery, impact, and the effectiveness. A group of thirteen research questions concerning the program are being studied, with the results presented at the 2014 ASEE Annual Conference and published in the Journal of Engineering Education. The evaluation effort is being led by Dr. Gary Lichtenstein, who is an expert in mixed-methods research and has participated in research and evaluation studies in STEM education for over a decade. Ultimately, this pilot project is developing a model for conducting training workshops that result in widespread use of educational innovations to improve STEM learning.